LAC to Beaverhouse
by jdddl8
The weather was certainly different. Last year I had hard rain for 2 hours in 23 days. This year I hardly saw the sun. It rained nearly everyday and it hardly ever got above 65 degrees with a lot of nights around 40. It was great weather for portaging except for the rain. I never really got hot and for the most part I stayed dry and had a fire every night. The fishing was not great except for bass which were big and plentiful. I did get all the species but not a lot of walleye and not a forty inch northern. I guess I got about 20 lake trout.
Some of the creeks were amazing. For example Claire creek which I had to walk and then portage last time I was there had over four feet of water and the Beaverhouse portage flooded so I had to canoe the last 100 yards. It probably would have been a great year to go up the Lemay Creek but I was getting sick of the weather by that point.
Fortunately I was physically fit and had no issues with the portages and had no injuries at all. There is one portage from Side to a No Name which has I would say about an 80 yard cliff which got my heart pumping but I was able to do it three times. A lot of the portages had a ton of mud and I did fall into the mud a couple of times. I had a winter jacket and sleeping bag so I stayed warm.
I made a mistake going from no name to Isabelle and ended up on a lake which was not long and thin. After checking the map I realized I had taken a mud-filled portage to Point and fortunately I didn't have to turn around and redo the bog as there was a portage direct to Isabelle.
There was very little wild life. I saw my token moose swimming on Quetico, a family of muskrats sunning on shore before frantically heading to water and three beavers at once swimming just off my campsite.
I wouldn’t say it was my favorite trip but I saw another area of the park. My big disaster was I lost my camera on day five on Bart. But I found it again on day ten in Agnes. It had fallen out of my breast pocket into my big pack which I never look into because I count the large items that I take out. It was fortuitous that I thought I had put my tent pegs separate from my tent poles and thought they might be in the bottom of the pack and that’s how I found the camera. It was too bad that I didn't get pictures of those five days as I have only been in that part of the park a couple of times before.
Next year I will stay in the north end of the park which is my favorite area.
You can view my pictures at https://photos.app.goo.gl/YZgBDo5fW5xUMVLp7
If anyone is interested in my boring daily audio journal email me at john.larway@gmail.com